No White Knights Riding To Rescue

I have lived in Payson for more than three years. Reading the Roundup regularly, I have learned that Paysonites pride themselves on their caring community. However, lately I have learned that not everyone in Payson exemplifies this quality.

I live on the northwest side of the Woodhill subdivision, where the final phase of homebuilding is taking place. During this process, drainage of water has been redirected through some of the residents' back yards. One builder has constructed all the homes on Fox Hill Road. When doing the grading for these homes, this builder has also forced the water drainage to the homes that front on Boulder Ridge Road. The recent rainwater has been pouring through these peoples' backyards and out through their front yards to the street, carrying along with it much of their granite and dirt and depositing it into the street.

One homeowner in particular has been adversely affected. She suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, and is physically disabled. She is independent, however, physical activity is not something she can do. She is neither able to remove this granite by herself, nor financially able to hire someone to do this job every time it rains. We, her neighbors, try to help her out by shoveling the granite back where it belongs.

We wish the people responsible for creating this problem in the first place (the developers and the builder) would change the grading, eliminating the need to shovel. Calls to the city engineers seem to fall on deaf ears. They claim there is nothing that can be done.

Prior to the paving of Fox Hill Road, this water problem was minimal and manageable. The builder claims that he is not responsible because he did what the city required of him. The developers claim they are no longer responsible because they have turned things over to the homeowner's association.

Well, maybe legally these people are not responsible for helping her alleviate the water problem, but whatever happened to being morally responsible, just because it is the right thing do? The developers could do the right thing, too, but they choose not to get involved.

If I were the builder, the developers, or the city engineers, I would be ashamed of the way that I was treating this woman. Most of the people in Payson are caring and kind, but there are some here who seem very callous and indifferent to people's predicaments. Shame on them.